Michael Hayden: Why I Act
It’s not surprising that Tony nominee Michael Hayden chose to write a stream-of-consciousness essay inspired by his role in The Language of Trees at Roundabout Theatre Company’s black-box Underground theater. In Steven Levenson’s play, Hayden plays an American translator imprisoned in a Middle East war zone who experiences hallucinations, including an imaginary cellblock encounter with Bill Clinton. It’s just the latest in a long list of challenging parts for Hayden, ranging from Billy Bigelow in the Broadway revival of Carousel, Cliff Bradshaw in Cabaret on Broadway and in London, a Tony-nominated turn as Oscar Rolfe in Judgment at Nuremberg, Chris Keller in Roundabout’s 1997 revival of All My Sons and Chance Wayne in a DC production of Sweet Bird of Youth. Absent from the New York stage since Festen two years ago, the multitalented actor thoughtfully addresses the pull of the stage for Broadway.com.
Playing football. Running for a touchdown after I’d just thrown an interception on the last series. Sprinting downfield, faster than I ever have. No thought. No pause to consider. Easy. Ease.
The first time I kissed my wife. Floating. Wonder. Ache.
When my mother and sister died. At their funerals. A volcano of pain erupting and subsiding, only to leave a hole so deep and wide, a hole to fall into. Unfortunately, there is no hole. I am the hole, empty, void, until the next explosion.
I hope this essay is chaotic. Nothing else—well, nothing else that was honest—could come from me. I look what I have written above and I wonder at how few instances there are in my life that I was actually able to slow down long enough to experience them. To be inside of them. I would love to say I felt that way when my children were born. But I didn’t. I was too stunned. I went through the motions of the proud father. When my daughter was born I think it took me about two years to realize that I was a father and that life had changed. For the most part it was like chasing an experience—but in a dream, where you can never seem to move fast enough. It was a little quicker with my son. I was more broken then, cracked wider by the love of and for my daughter. I saw him sooner.
It is little different on stage. I became an actor first because I realized I was not good enough to be a professional quarterback. I had loved playing football for a long time. But I loved playing quarterback because, at least in part, I knew people were watching me. I think a lot of people become actors for that reason. To be stared at.I have come to realize that it is something about that search for connectedness, for community, that I long for. Something about the messiness of that process that I enjoy. And I find that mostly in the theater. Does that make me sound pretentious? Probably. So what. I am an idealist at heart. A bunch of people go into a room. There is a script. Words. A map. How the hell do you get all these people to come together and tell a story? And so it begins. All the questioning, anxiety, fear and tumult. A group of actors wrestling in the mud to find some sort of elusive truth about humanity. Because truth is messy.
Elizabeth Ashley, a dear friend and the sexiest leading lady I ever played across, calls acting a “blood sport.” She’s right. It’s never what we assume it is when we are applying our minds instead of our guts. But you have to tear away a lot of crap to get past Ideas. You gotta bleed. That’s what still fires me. That struggle. I’ve had two years of average work and personal struggle wiped away after 10 minutes of work on a great role. Does that make me crazy? Probably. But that’s me. I can fight it or accept it... I still do both.
What am I trying to connect to anyway? And why does it matter? I see work all the time where very gifted people are celebrating themselves on stage. The other around them are props. And in our business right now that kind of work is often applauded. But I can’t do it. Mostly, I think, because the characters I get to play are usually far more interesting than I am. But also, I want to partake in something...greater. In someone else—something else—if for no other reason than it offers me a reprieve from the words and thoughts and fears that rattle around in my own head most of the time. From the noise that separates me from life.
But also, because what takes place between two people flying by the seat of their pants is far more interesting and shocking than that which either could create on their own. I proposed to my wife while I was blow-drying my hair. What the hell was that?! Who would script that? And who would ever say “yes,” you may wonder. She asks herself the same question every day.
Does it matter? It? Theater? The work? I don’t know. It matters to me. Humanity matters—shining a light on people’s lives and telling beautiful stories. Stories that make people gasp, sigh, laugh or cry, because they see themselves and are reminded that they are not alone. Coming face to face with my vast array of shortcomings every time I enter a rehearsal room, meeting others who are bruised but not beaten, and together battling it out. Howling. Whispering. Teasing. Any way to get at a truth. Not the truth, but a truth.
I love actors for the courage they have to do that. To start from the beginning every time. To be broken by their characters and tell a story far greater than their own. That’s what keeps me coming back. That, and being stared at. It sure as hell isn’t the money. Oh yes, and it is fun. It’s fun to be a crazy person in the room with other crazies. I try to approach my work with ridiculousness and seriousness. Curious George with an edge. That’s me.
I am now doing The Language of Trees at the Roundabout Underground. I find myself with another gift. The script. The cast. It is a play that addresses, at least in part, the inadequacy of language to express... to express. That is what drew me to the play. And the need for a job. For words never tell the story. Something of great magnitude happens—a birth, a death, a kiss—an infant puts her hand in yours, and you see, really see, for the first time how small and how completely dependent on you she is. Your heart is no longer your own. It walks on two legs.
Such moments, such stories, can only be told in a whisper; no, in silence. Or in a mirror. Like onstage, where we speak through that mirror we hold up to reality. But once in a while, for a moment, we break through, and are one with the thing or the person we are trying to connect with. Those are moments of awe for me. Of humility. Because I could never be part of them on my own. I’m too small. Too limited. It takes a roomful of people with far more talent than I, far more courage. And finally, a community completed by an audience, bearing witness, so that we know that the tree that falls in the forest actually does make a sound.